Maslenitsa: Dasvidaniya Winter

          Bruce Lee once said, “Be like water”. I think he formulated this profound aphorism while practising to walk during a cold winter. The water that falls from the sky does not always reach the earth as water. It lives a life as it passes through the different layers of our atmosphere, reaching us as rain, sleet or snow. 

Water is one of the most formidable of opponents. It is least distracted and lies still. It changes and moulds itself into various shapes and forms. If you drop a small stone into a puddle, the puddle graciously accepts it by folding itself into ripples. But if you were to step strong on it, it will respond by splashing itself on you. 

Water takes on a new paradigm during winter. There is the pure, immaculate snow, untouched and chaste. It will respond kindly to gentle hands and oblige to become a snowman or a palace. But to a audacious foot that steps on it, the snow exposes its effective weapons, in the form of a sheet of glassy ice. As you confidently stride crushing lively snowflakes of yesterday under your heavy boots, the spirit waits lurking, right under the deceptively solid layer of snow that absorbs your feet submissively. Right about the moment when your confidence gets the better of your judgement, the ice reveals itself pulling the foot you just moved. You frantically try to use the other foot to regain your balance, but the ice has more hands to pull your legs. In a frantic moment compressed into microseconds, your movements resemble a talented dancer, before you fall, along with your pride. If you were lucky enough, the fall would be borne by your gluteus muscles (Colloquially referred to as the “butt”) cushioned well by adipose tissue.

The long prologue aside (what did you think, I fell? Of course not.), the point of this post is not about the deceptive properties of ice. The ice and its deception is a part of the long winter Russia faces. But when that winter ends, (at least in the calendar) Russians celebrate it with a blast, almost literally. The celebrations have a long history in the Pagan tradition of Russia and predate Christianity, although now the dates coincide with the last week before the Great Lent.

Maslenitsa, or Carnival as it translates, is a festival to mark the end of winter. Winter is personified as a huge straw man and is placed at the center of the celebration grounds. The crowd forms a circle and goes around the statue, chanting verses that command winter to go away. The circle spirals inward as people move faster and closer and gets to the foot of the straw man. There is a loud chorus shouting that would melt the snow if it had ears. After that, the straw man is set on fire, while the crowd gleefully celebrates the end of the cold, depressing winter.

This is what Wikipedia has to say on Maslenitsa.

“The mascot of the celebration is usually a brightly dressed straw effigy of Maslenitsa, formerly known as Kostroma. As the culmination of the celebration, on Sunday evening, Lady Maslenitsa is stripped of her finery and put to the flames of a bonfire. Any remaining blintzes are also thrown on the fire and Lady Maslenitsa's ashes are buried in the snow (to "fertilize the crops").”

As a cultural outsider, whose city welcomes 20 degrees centigrade with bright sweaters, I found the idea of Maslenitsa very interesting. Being in Moscow, I did not want to lose this opportunity. So, I googled and found out about one of the biggest Maslenitsa gatherings in Moscow (I found out later that it was “around” Moscow). In fact, it was a camping ground outside the city, the exact location of which was known to regular campers and hikers. I decided to “hike” with a group, after all, what could go wrong, right? Maybe they will walk a kilometre or two, and get to the camping site. I later found out that the hike was to be around 15km long and would start at 8 in the morning. Now, this was a shock. But hey, your brave friend does not go back on his decision. So, I went. In the freezing morning hours of a Sunday morning, when the Sun is still asleep, I went to the meeting point and joined the group.

It is a request from the group that the exact location of the grounds remain a secret, so I shall not tell you which train I took and which station I got down at. After travelling for a while, we got down at a station, tightened our backpacks, and started to walk. We walked, and walked. Peter Jackson’s greatest success is not the number of Oscars his movies got, but rather the fact that every time you hike or trek, you see yourself in a scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We walked through a forest, where some trees still maintained their greenery through the winter and were eagerly looking forward to spring. We crushed snow under our boots and skated through the ice (without slipping, of course).

After about an hour of brisk walk, at which stage I estimated that we had crossed about 10km (I later found out that we had done less than 7), we took a break by a glade that was downstream from a small dam. We shared the food and drinks we had brought. I was convinced by intense persuasion from my fellow hikers to take an amiably colored drink, which they said was made of honey with very little alcohol content. It tasted divine, almost like a strongly made tea sweetened with honey. 

We continued our walk and crossed the dam, where I found this charming chap. He seemed to say, “When the water flows, it flows. But when it freezes, I put a stool there and ponder over life”.

After we crossed the dam, we stumbled upon a monument to the villagers from the village who had given up their lives for the motherland in the Second World War. 

At this point, the hike leader told us that we were running late and may not be able to reach the grounds at noon, as planned. We labored on, trudging through the snow, cutting across the curved path to form straighter, shorter paths. Finally, we reached the venue a little after noon. The events were about to begin.

  

All around me I saw people dressed in vibrant colors. Oranges and yellows and greens flowed through the place as though spring was already there. But I had no time to look around and admire. A girl who had apparently time-traveled from the 13^th century, tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to join the crowd gathered at the bear den, where she and the others would wake up the sleeping bear.

Normally the mention of the word bear, sleeping or otherwise, would have sent me running, but I was err...cough cough, encouraged to go to the cave.

I lent my voice to the chorus that sang songs to wake up the bear. While I didn’t get much of the Russian song, I surreptitiously inserted random verses from the Rig Veda to fit the tune. It worked and the bear got up from his lumber. And spring was here. But winter was still around. We had to chase her away. With fire.

Fire, to a culture that survives -20 degrees, is as valuable as oxygen. It gives both heat and light, the two things that life needs, yet is deprived of in the winter. When the sun betrays the Russians by handing them over to the cruel clutches of winter, a fire is like carrying your own private, more loyal sun in your hearth.

So when the day comes to say goodbye to the winter, the Russians do not wait for the sun to appear and assist them in the process. They channel the heat of their resilient spirit and set winter on fire. The straw man burned and fell apart one limb at a time.

There was a loud cheer from the crowd as each part fell. The crowd went berserk when the head fell. It was quite a delight to watch the joy on their faces, even in an era of artificial heating in homes and cars. But the fun wasn’t over yet. There were enough games, music and dance to keep everyone happy. There was tug of war, which I took part in. 

There was a 15 foot tall castle whose walls were made of ice. Scaling this castle while people threw snowballs at you was the game. I succeeded at this with some help from the people who were already on top. There were slides and gigantic swings for the kids to play.

There was the mother of all ice bucket challenges, where players stripped to their underwear (temperatures, even after burning winter, were sub-zero) and tried to climb a 30-foot tall pole. As far as I saw, none succeeded. The main reason was that after a while your hands freeze and you cannot grip the pole anymore.

 

There were other ice sculptures such as this one, which provided ample opport -unity for pictures.  

There was also a makeshift setup for making pancakes(called bliny) which are as much a part of Maslenitsa as the fire is. Round and yellow, the pancake symbolises the sun, but the symbolism was lost to my digestive system which gobbled them up by the dozen.

 And so, with that the festival came to an end for most people. There was a train to Moscow arriving at the platform in twenty minutes and the crowd hastened towards the station which was 2 km away. I joined the crowd and realised that I would not be able to make it at that pace. With a flurry of mumbled Izvinites (Excuse me) and Spasibas (thank you), I rushed towards the station and got to within 5 minutes to find a platform as crowded as the grounds had been. I asked my fellow walker where the ticket counter was and the fellow nonchalantly told me that it was without charge. Was this a festival concession, the Russian government offered? I did not know. But by this time, the train arrived and we all got into it. I spoke to a couple of co-passengers and discovered to my horror that the Russian government was not a charity organisation. But then, they were considerate enough to have a ticket counter at the exit, so those innocent, wayward souls like me could buy the ticket.

As I dragged my tired feet back home, I was filled with images of joy and laughter from the Festival. Winter may not have left us yet, but spring has definitely arrived.

An Interview with FoE.in

Disclaimer: I have been thinking about writing a post on the background of freedom of expression and censorship in India. There was an outrage on social media and elsewhere that the right wing Hindutva government was clamping down on civil liberties. It struck me as odd that this was the first time a government had suppressed freedom of expression. So, I decided to dig deeper into this censorship muddle and see where its roots lay. This post is an outcome of that. The views are completely personal.





“Warning Bells for Freedom of Expression in Modi’s India?”
“Dark Moment for Indian Free Speech After Prominent Journalist Gets Threatened”
“Can you hear sounds of Fascist jack-boots in India?”

India (and more specifically, its media) seems to have suddenly woken up to a morning where Freedom of Expression was covered by the dark clouds of censorship. Since radio shows were the new rage, instead of polemicizing on the subject, we decided to have a heartfelt, informed discussion. You know, a “Mann ki Baat” of sorts. And who better to talk about the subject than the subject himself.

Yes, for our show, we have invited our subject, Freedom of Expression in India. He prefers to call himself FoE.in, these days.

Interviewer (I): Dude, why are you limping? And why are you all covered in blood? What happened to you?

FoE.in: Oh, it’s nothing. All in a day’s work.

I: This is what you get in a day’s work? Do you work at a Toll Booth on the Gurgaon Expressway or what?

FoE.in: Ha Ha! Keep making jokes that and you’ll end up just like me.

I: No, but seriously what happened to you, man?

FoE.in: Nothing. Someone wrote something which someone else took offence to and I got beaten up in the process. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine if I get some respite from those that take offence. Shall we get on with the interview? I fear we may not have much time before your studio is attacked by some mob or the other.

I: Don’t worry, my friend. We’re a TV Studio. Whenever we sense that an attack is coming, we merely turn on our Breaking News ticker and get our speakers to full volume. The sheer noise keeps all vermin at bay.

FoE.in: Hmm. If you say so. I should thank you for giving me this opportunity. I may be the FoE.in, but it’s not every day that I am given the chance to freely express myself.

I: Ah! Let’s start from there. Tell our audience about yourself.

FoE.in: I am the Freedom of Expression.  I am the right by which you can communicate your thoughts and ideas to anyone who is willing to receive them. In the Indian context, I was kept caged when the country was ruled by a colonial government, to prevent me from causing any threat to what they called “public order”.

I: That is par for the course. The British weren’t the most liked among colonial masters. They didn’t want anyone shooting off his mouth against them. So, with the independence of the country, you must have also been freed, right?

FoE.in: That’s what I thought. I was quite hopeful when those wise men sat down to write the Constitution. They were themselves the victims of suppression by the British Raj. So, you would expect them to fight tooth and nail for the freedom of expression. And they did. The Constitution guaranteed freedom of expression as a Fundamental Right, in its Article 19.

I: Oh that’s good to hear. So you were finally able to breathe freely.

FoE.in: Almost. The paragon of Indian liberalism, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru took me gently out of my cage. He was about to set me off, like he had done to countless doves. But, just as I was about to fly, I felt a rough hand on my left wing.

I: Oh! What happened? Was it an extremist force?

FoE.in: That’s what I thought. But when I turned behind, I saw Nehruji’s hands breaking my left wing and leg before I could fly. He had moved a motion in the Indian Parliament to amend the Constitution. Less than a year after it was adopted, the Constitution was amended to include what was then called “Reasonable restrictions”. Instead of stopping him, most others in the Parliament, including Dr. Ambedkar supported the motion. It gave birth to the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution, which among other things restricted Freedom of Expression.

I: Wait a minute! So you’re saying that the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression but then takes it away by imposing reasonable restrictions?

FoE.in: (Nervously looks around) Well, I wouldn’t say that it takes it away. I mean, I wasn’t caged again, just kept on a leash, I guess.

I: How long a leash?

FoE.in: The First Amendment to the Indian Constitution brought in a changed clause to Article 19. Article 19(2) gives the state the power to “to impose “reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence”.

I: Sounds fair enough. Some of us believe that you were allowed to run amok for about a year after independence. I mean, people cannot go around saying all kinds of nasty stuff, right? There has to be some kind of restraint.
FoE.in: Hmmm (smiles). What kind of restraint?

I: Well, I don’t know. Some kind. Like there should be certain things people shouldn’t be allowed to say.

FoE.in: And who decides what adults can or cannot say? You? Your parents? Your boss? Your religious leaders? The society at large? The government?

I: Err... the government, I suppose.

FoE.in: You mean, mature, grownup adults who have a right to vote and elect their government to power will then have to submit to its whims and fancies on what they can or cannot say?

I: Of course. We elect the government investing our faith in its wisdom. Let them be the gatekeepers of what we can or cannot say. We elect it so that we may be governed.


FoE.in: You do realise that we live in a democracy, right? Where criticism of the government is not just necessary, but mandatory for the health and vitality of the democracy?

I: Yes, of course.

FoE.in: So, if we were to go by your notion that the government should be the gatekeeper of what you can or cannot say, what if you wanted to criticise an act of the government?

I: The government should allow it.

FoE.in: Ha ha! Don’t be naive. Do you think they would? Let me point again to history. In 1949, the Urdu poet Majrooh Sultanpuri, famous for his lyrics in Bollywood movies, wrote a poem criticising newly independent India’s decision to join the Commonwealth. He called Nehru as “Commonwealth ka daas”. He refused to apologise when asked to do so, and was promptly imprisoned for two years. Probably one of the first victims of those “reasonable restrictions”. There were many more in the years that followed. A little later, a ruthless emergency was imposed when newspapers carried an obituary to Democracy. More recently, India’s ranking fell 10 places to 122 in the Press Freedom Index of 2010. Google received 93 requests in 2013 to take down content that was critical of the government.

I: That’s horrible. So are you saying that the government cannot be given the power to decide the limits of freedom of expression?

FoE.in: No. Rather they shouldn’t be. The cornerstone of a democracy is the guaranteed freedom of expression. Without the freedom to criticise an elected government, a democracy becomes meaningless. And this is the main reason why a government, any government, should not be the arbiter on what can or cannot be called reasonable restrictions.

I: I see. It becomes a clear case of conflict of interest, if a government has to decide if a critique of its working can be viewed by the voting population.

FoE.in: Yet, that is what has happened. By placing this power in the hands of the government and allowing it to curtail our freedom of expression using “reasonable restrictions”, we have made ourselves the subjects of a nanny state which gets to decide what we can or cannot read, hear or watch. In an implicit admission of our own immaturity as a population, we have given the scissors of censorship to the government to cut arbitrarily what and how much of it we see.

I: Hey, no. I cannot agree with you there. Look at our movies. They reek of obscenity. Maybe, we need a more responsible censor, and not the kind you talk about.
FoE.in: Repeating what I said, we are a mature democracy. A population considered old and rational enough to vote should also be trusted upon to choose what they would and would not want to watch. What we need instead is a certification board; to tell us which movie content is suitable for kids and which isn’t. Those with delicate sensitivities will thus be warned and can keep away from content that they do not want to be an audience to.

I: Really? Keep your ideology back in your cage. First create an audience that can respond maturely to whatever is being said to them.  Promise me an audience that will be tolerant to insults towards what they have faithfully guarded for generations, what they derive hope from. Promise me that this anger already created by political parties will abate just because there are posters in different colours.


FoE.in: This audience is not going to drop from the sky. It has to evolve and the only way for it to evolve is by repeatedly challenging the limits of what is considered acceptable. And that can happen only when there is protection to artists from vandals and goons.

I: If that was so simple a scenario, why do we have the government banning things right, left and centre?

FoE.in: Put yourself in the place of a judge. There is a new book out in the market, that some feel hurts their sentiments. There are incidents of violence and mass demonstrations against the book that lead to loss of life and property. Who is guilty of violence? The author or the protesters?

I: Obviously, the protesters.

FoE.in: Good. Now think for a minute. What is easier? To resolve the law and order crisis by arresting the violent protesters or to ban the book and silence the author?

I: I see what you mean. It is definitely easier to silence one man who does nothing but write books.


FoE.in: Exactly. If the judge were to have this power of discretion in his hands, then that is what he would do. And this is what renders our “delicate” sensitivities even more delicate and prone to unbalanced coaxing. In fact, every time the government uses its power to ban something, it encourages these delicate sensitivities to react with violence.
What if that power no longer existed? What if there was no legal regime that backed the decision to ban a book?

I: I see. So you’re saying that once you bring in a law that supports arbitrary action under vague terms like “reasonable restrictions”, you can no longer stop those with the power to use that law from abusing it.

FoE.in: Yes. And it gets worse. The minute you appease one group of protesters by agreeing to their demands, you immediately set up a bad precedent and imply that if the protests were violent enough, the demand to curtail freedom of expression would be met. And once you meet the demands of one group, the others feel cheated. The more radical voices among them start getting louder. Word gets around that their demands were not met because they were not violent enough. You kickstart a vicious cycle of competitive intolerance, where each side wants to be the most thin-skinned one and thereby extract concessions from the State. This thin-skinnedness becomes a political tactic and parties are formed, not with manifestos, but with the commitment to exploit this thin-skinnedness and command political strength.
Group A does this. Group B sees that A does it and gets away with it, so B now takes it a step further. A and C see B doing it and take it another step further.

If I should not paint a cartoon of Mohammad, how can you caricature Saraswati? If Rushdie is to be banned, so should Doniger be. Thus goes the rhetoric pushing you into a slippery spiral of intolerance, violence to back that intolerance, and state complicity in both ignoring and even initiating that violence.

This violence gets its own form of vindication, a state sanction, if the state accedes to their demands. For instance, we know about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. We all went “Je Suis Charlie”. What happened then? A German newspaper reprinted the cartoons and was firebombed. A few Indian newspapers that reprinted the cartoons, LiveMint, the Hindustan Times apologised and took the cartoons down from their website. The Hindu went one step further. They apologised for printing an image of people carrying copies of Charlie Hebdo. This was not even a failed commitment to free speech. This was against the tenets of journalism, where you refuse to report something because doing so invites violence. When I see the story of Shireen Dalvi, India’s only woman Urdu editor, I am left speechless. She has been on the run ever since the newspaper published the cartoons from Charlie Hebdo. Dalvi gave a written apology but FIRs continue to be registered against her.
Now how long before other identity groups take notice of this and realise that they can get their demands too if they are violent enough? We have handed violence the power of veto where you can silence anyone and get the state to issue diktats that fulfil your demands.

The sad part is that in all this, I, FoE.in, am the greatest victim.

I: I really feel sorry for you. We happen to have become a country where anything gets justified, if there is enough violence. But you talk about identity groups. What about the liberals of these identity groups? I mean, these groups, be it religion or caste, should have some moderate elements as well, right? What about them? Do they not support you?

FoE.in: That part is even more saddening. The moderate elements, most of the time in whispers, and sometimes in the open, condemn this violence. But almost all of the time, they tend to separate the identity group, let’s say religion, from the violence. They claim that the perpetrators are not the true representative of the religion. While that statement rightly says that the violence is the manifestation of the desperation of the minority and not the majority sentiment as a whole, what it also does is to grant the perpetrator his victory. He believes that he is the defender of his faith and does not care if he is not considered as the true representative of his faith. What matters is that his faith is defended from criticism and he has won. We think we are distancing the perpetrator from the religion, but we are also covering the religion from criticism, which is what the perpetrator wanted in the first place. So through violence, he may be seen as an outcaste. But he has made his point. The religion is now protected from criticism and there is a state sanction to it.

And once that starts, there is no looking back. There will always be an escalation of violence to demand concessions from the state. Where violence becomes a political tool to be used at will, anarchy ensues. The state withdraws itself while letting the mob become the authority on what is offensive and what isn’t. The truth is that everything is offensive to a large part of the population whose favourite pastime is getting offended. The more a state concedes, the more will be demanded from it. The more an artist agrees to bend under the pretext of responsible self-regulation, the more he will be made to crawl. Because, beating me up is always easier than defending me. Taking offense is always easier than creating art.

I: Let’s talk on the offence part a bit. You’ve stressed on the part that people tend to take major offence if their religious sensitivities are mocked.

FoE.in: Yes. That’s right. There are even special laws that allow the state to take action if the religious beliefs of a person are insulted.

I: Oh, is there? Like a blasphemy law, you mean?

FoE.in: Almost. India does not have a blasphemy law. And thank God for that. The closest it has is Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which punishes with fine and imprisonment up to 3 years speech, writings, or signs which ''with deliberate and malicious intention'' insult the religion or the religious beliefs of any class of citizens.

I: My God! Three years for making fun of religious beliefs sounds steep. Who wrote this law?

FoE.in: This law, as most of our Penal Code, comes to us from our colonial past. A famous case in Lahore, against the publisher of a book called “Rangila Rasul”. There were agitations by the local Muslim population against the references to Prophet Mohammad’s personal life in the book. The British authorities, in an attempt to restore order, prosecuted the author, but the Lahore High Court shot down the case saying it was not legally sustainable under the existing Section 153A. The British, in their penchant to have a legal basis to every action enacted 295A to prosecute such publishers in the future.

I: And what happened to the publisher of Rangila Rasul?

FoE.in: Oh, him? Poor chap was murdered in the court premises.

I: Barbaric times, they were. 

FoE.in: Not completely. The Rangila Rasul case also showed us what could have, and in fact, should have been done if such works were written.

I: And what was that?

FoE.in: Irrespective of the mob violence and the legal action, a Muslim Qazi Maulana Sanaullah Amritsari wrote a work titled Muqaddas Rasool. He countered a piece of writing with another piece of writing. Pen fought pens. An example of a truly mature response if your belief is insulted.

I: This insult to religious beliefs, how big a nemesis is it to freedom of expression?

FoE.in: Big. Gigantic. If you were to categorise the calls for censorship based on the people demanding it, there would only be two categories. Government and private parties. Most calls from the government come in cases of criticism of its activity. And almost all calls from private parties cite religious beliefs as the reason.

I: Why do you think that is?

FoE.in: Simple. Religion is a rallying point. Even more so in the Indian context. It is easier to gather a crowd under the pretext of protecting something as amorphous and changing as religious beliefs, than it is to get people to protect the rights of others to challenge those beliefs. It is quite easy to insult religious beliefs, not because you are looking to do it, but because that idea is held close to the hearts of people, that even a genuine question about the idea comes across as an insult. Let’s think about this. How easy it is to insult the religion of people who believe that everything is God? You say that idol worship is bad, you have insulted one religion. You say that birth control is a right, you have insulted another and in either case, will be marched straight to prison. Any pamphlet of one religion could be an insult to the beliefs of people following another and vice versa. Atheists will, by their sheer existence, insult the religious beliefs of all believers. And if you were religious about being an atheist, all other believers would insult your beliefs.

I: Hahaha. That way, we’ll all be in prison for three years for insulting the religious beliefs of the others. But on a serious note, religion, as you said, is a topic close to people’s hearts. There should be some limits on the criticism of religion.

FoE.in: Religion is an idea. People have rights granted to them by the Constitution. Ideas don’t. You can take your idea as seriously as you want. But you do not have the right to protect that idea from being subject to criticism. What you do have the right is to counter that criticism with your opinion. Or to turn your face away from an idea you don’t like. In the marketplace of ideas, the better idea gains currency, while the lesser ones are discarded. You can violate the sanctity of another person’s idea with your criticism, but you do not have the right to resort to violence and physically harm him.

I: Ok, agreed that violence is wrong. Which is why we need laws for censorship. So that a legal mechanism exists and can be used to redress grievances. What is your problem with that?

FoE.in: My friend, would you rather be beaten to an inch of your life or be put behind bars for the rest of your life?

I: I...beating is a one off thing, jail... but, violence... I don’t know, man. I can’t make that choice.

FoE.in: Exactly. Yet, that’s the choice you offered me. Laws that curtail freedom of speech, or violence that suppresses freedom of speech have the same effect.

I: I kind of get the point you are making. But what about the minorities in India? This country was born after a bloody partition. If anyone is allowed to speak anything they want, the minorities will be vulnerable.

FoE.in: Quite the contrary. Freedom of expression makes the most sense for someone in a minority. Let me explain. Let’s assume that there’s an idea, a proposal rather, that a certain study found that an event had occurred at a certain location in history, and the majority public agreed with it, so did the government, but a single historian, like a lone wolf, objected to it and presented his own findings. Or let’s say the majority religious community wants to malign the minority. They dominate the narrative and ruthlessly suppress any counterpoints. What makes the minority more vulnerable; freedom of expression or reasonable restrictions?

I: Reasonable restrictions. Oh! I see. With something as vague as “reasonable restrictions” the majority, be it religious, or political, could stifle all criticism. The tyranny of majority will be guaranteed in perpetuity because all opposition is silenced. This in a way explains the penchant the majority have for censorship. But why do the religious minorities in India support it too? What’s in it for them?

FoE.in: My friend, this is something I’ve learnt after decades of being beaten up, set on fire, stabbed, shot at and what not. People just don’t like criticism. Whether it is Doniger’s Hindus, or Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, or Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, nobody seems to like criticism of their gods or religion. Even criticism of their leaders doesn’t go well with them. Biographies, books that have characters that resemble our leaders, be it Nehru or Thackeray, sometimes I feel such books should be published after giving me a warning, you know, like a fire alarm, so that I can go into hiding and not get beaten up.

But yeah, to answer your question, the majorities, the minorities, nobody wants their idyllic castle of ideas breached. They do not want criticism even if it is to encourage reform and progress. When leaders begin to be seen as no less than gods, any criticism of them becomes blasphemous too. This attains a whole new level when religion and politics mix and you have caste-based and religion-based parties set up. In that setup, any criticism of an anachronistic religious tenet is immediately countered with mass mobilization and violence.

When these become steps on the staircase to power, political one-upmanship manifests itself in the number of books you ban and the number of mouths you can silence. In India, when it comes to censorship, there is no Left, there is no Right, no saffron, white or green. Only a black drape that comes down from time to time on my battered and bruised body.

I: I have no words to console you, my friend. We have savagely wronged you and we are sorry. Tell us what can we do to protect our right to freedom of expression?

FoE.in: Thank you for the understanding. It is so rare to come these days.

Let’s begin with the government. The anachronistic colonial-era laws on censorship need to go. Whether it is 295A or Article 19(2), or the more recent 66A for the Internet, they all need to be debated upon. We are no longer a colony, nor are we a fledgling state that was widely expected to splinter and fall apart. We are a vibrant and mature democracy that can very well take care of itself.
Freedom of Expression should be subjected to only one restriction. An incitement to violence. The state needs to take necessary action if anyone, under the freedom of expression, calls for violence. Other than this, all other restrictions have to go. If that leads to a piece of writing or a movie that causes violence because it is critical, penalise the violent, not the author. Violence will be tolerated under no circumstances. All forms of freedom of expression are protected and any violence will be ruthlessly suppressed. The state has to send this message to the people, the leaders of identity politics that the people rally around, and the state itself, to which these leaders look to for their power and authority. The state has to protect those who challenge the boundaries of free expression, instead of shifting the onus to the artist to responsibly express himself.

Secondly, our liberals need to abandon their hypocrisy and double standards in their support to Freedom of Expression. The arguments of “Yes, but...” and “What about...” need to disappear. Even more importantly, the vain and hollow argument that we should be mindful of the sentiments of the people, should go. If someone claims to be offended by something, let him be. So what? That claim has no place in a mature democracy. Especially in one as diverse as India, where every single person is a minority unto himself, anything you say can offend someone or the other. Does that mean we silence ourselves under the pretence of responsible self-regulation? No. That is when we continue to express ourselves freely. The liberals need to stand up for freedom of expression of all art, not just the ones that they approve. A casteist interpretation of history maybe regressive in its content, but it is to be protected just as much as a Marxist interpretation of history. The former may be commented upon and critiqued and may well be off the shelf because it doesn’t sell. But not because someone felt offended and burnt copies of the book. Defend the glorious, but also defend the obnoxious just as much. That’s how you defend the cause of freedom of expression. More importantly, for every Charlie Hebdo and Perumal Murugan who is supported, a hundred other instances of censorship, like Shireen Dalvi’s, go under the radar. It is impractical to notice and oppose every instance of legal censorship. The solution here is to start voicing demands for a repeal of laws that allow for censorship, including the 66A. On the contrary, until liberal support for freedom of expression is selective and biased, I do not see any light at the end of the tunnel.

Lastly, our people. They are the most important part of the censorship story. Most censorship is done upon their demand or using them as the excuse. Before you run to file an FIR, or rush to burn books, you need to understand that you not only deny another person his right to free speech in the present but also deny yourselves that right in the future. What you did to another, will be done to you. If an idea close to your heart is questioned or criticised, rise in defence of that idea by countering the criticism, not by silencing the critic. It has to be impressed upon people, especially those fanatical about their ideas and ideologues, that the supremacy of an idea lies in debating and defeating its critics and not in silencing them. Suppression of a criticism exposes not only the weakness of an idea, but also the insecurity in those holding onto that idea.

Strong identification with a group gives people a sense of relevance, but that does not take away their responsibility to be a cooperative member of a diverse society with multiple groups. To the majority, freedom of expression grants them the means to express their opinion. To the minority, it is the only guarantee that their voices, even if less loud, will be heard. The society has to therefore, come together and build a new social contract around freedom of expression, to hold the state responsible, not if their sentiments are offended, but if their rights are denied, not if there is criticism, but if there is violence, not if someone speaks their mind, but if those voices are suppressed. There lies our path to becoming a truly mature society.

I: I couldn’t agree more with you, FoE.in. Thank you for your time and those words of wisdom. I do not know if anything you said is gonna happen. But today, we stand with you. We stand with the freedom of expression, come what may. Let’s raise our hands against tyranny, against suppression and censorship. Give me your hand, the one that is not hurt.

Cameraman: Sir, our studio has been broken into. They have torn apart our loudspeakers. We need to go. Now. The car is waiting.

I: FoE.in! We are leaving now, but don’t forget, we are always with you.

FoE.in: May I come with you in your car?

I: Oh! Sheesh! I’m afraid there’s not enough space. But you know your way around here. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Right?

FoE.in: Sigh! Some things never change. It was nice knowing you. See you.